source file: m1376.txt
Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 19:01:58 -0400

Subject: TUNING digest 1375

From: Daniel Wolf <DJWOLF_MATERIAL@compuserve.com>

Gary Morrison wrote:

< There's a big difference between music
<being microtonal, and having notes detuned here and there.  I personally=

<believe that a truly microtonal composition should be tuned, preferably
<systematically, unlike 12TET throughout the entire composition.

Gary, could you go into this in more detail? I think you are suggesting a=

very important viewpoint and it would be interesting to contrast this wit=
h,
for example, the broader use of 'microtonal' by Johnny Reinhard.

It might be useful to frame the discussion around some real (and importan=
t)
pieces of music. Here are some suggestions: (1) Klarenz Barlo's
_C,ogluotobu"sis,letmesi_ which for long stretches uses 8 pitch classes
from 12tet, but gradually introduces the 4 remaining pitch classes tuned,=

however, a quartertone lower. (Bahlough's (the composer uses no fixed
spelling for his name) essay "Bus Journey to Parametron" (Feedback Papers=

21-23, available from Frog Peak Music) is a very important and highly
interesting document for all students of tuning and algorithmic
composition). Is this piece microtonal only when the lowered pitches appe=
ar
- or is it microtonal at all, since the pitches appear only in scalar
contexts with all intervals larger than semitones?  (2) Lou Harrison's
_Concerto In Slendro_ which uses two different anhemitonic pentatonics in=

5-limit Just Intonation. This piece is 'macrotonal'. From my point of vie=
w,
this could be considered microtonal only when the tuning is compared to
some other tuning. (3) The Carillo String Quartet, where a single
quarter-tone lower pitch is introduced as the seventh of a chord. Is this=

enough to be considered 'systematic'?

It is my impression that most list contributors like to use accurately
tuned pitches to express or reflect precise functional relations. There i=
s,
however, another school of thought, prominent among the 'new complexity'
composers, but also going back to include such figures as Alois Haba, whi=
ch
ignores tonal functions and uses small pitch distinctions essentially to
create a more variegated surface. Although I personally find this approac=
h
to pitches to be monodimensional, it does raise this issue of the role of=
 a
broadly defined 'tonality' in identifying a 'microtonality'. Certainly a
solo flute work by Ferneyhough that asks for fragments of 12tet, 24tet an=
d
31tet (or worse, the eighth tone oboe works of C.-S. Mahnkopf), even if i=
t
were accurately performable, begs the question of whether these fragments=

are to be interpreted by the listener as such, and if they are not to be,=

why is the precision of the tuning description so applied in the first
place. In contrast, a 12-tone score of Milton Babbitt, at every juncture,=

after every aggregate, in every parameter, reifies the underlying tonal
structure of the 12tet system.

Daniel Wolf
Frankfurt

    =